Free Republic

For years, California politicians and educators – who are sometimes the same – have talked about the “achievement gap” that separates poor and “English-learner” students from more advantaged classmates.

Now that the tabloid feeding frenzy has abated somewhat, it's time for a cooler look at the furor over former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's fathering a child by one of his household workers. A few pundits have tried to make the connection between his marital betrayal and his failings as governor, but one has nothing to do with the other. Illicit sex involving political figures is nothing new and, as we know now, was rampant even among the nation's founders. More recently, we have seen scandals involving Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Strom Thurmond, Mark Sanford and John Edwards, to name but...

The California Supreme Court's historic declaration that same-sex couples can marry will be tested in November when voters face a measure that would enact a constitutional ban on such marriages – and two new polls indicate that it will be a close one. The court set aside a 2000 ballot measure that barred recognition of same-sex marriages but, the new polls indicate, voters have been moving the other way. A Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters, taken on May 20-21, a few days after the Supreme Court decision, found that 51 percent disapproved of the Supreme Court's decree, while...

Philosopher George Santayana said it best: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." A bit of political history was repeated Monday when the state Assembly voted 46-31 along party lines for an immense new health care scheme without knowing whether it would work, or even how it would work – very much like the Legislature enacted a far-reaching energy "deregulation" scheme in 1996 that turned out to be a humongous disaster. The Assembly Appropriations Committee conducted a pro forma hearing and gave party-line approval, even though, as one critic, Donna Gerber of the California Nurses Association,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic legislators and the media roasted Republican senators for holding up passage of the state budget on issues that had nothing to do with the budget, such as their demands to restrict lawsuits over greenhouse gas emissions. "A whole lot of stuff was brought up at the end that was never brought up before," Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata complained at one point. It's a valid point, even though Republicans countered that they had to use the budget on other issues because the Democrats otherwise ignored them. But Republicans weren't the only ones leveraging the budget...

The most important thing about the stalemate was that it failed to accomplish the one thing it should have done, which was to force the governor and legislators of both parties to own up to the state's precarious finances and take some concrete steps to improve them. Although Schwarzenegger has pledged to veto about $700 million in spending to bring the budget into operational balance, it's a fiscal house of cards. The budget itself is based on unrealistic assumptions, especially on the revenue side of the ledger, and much of his supposed spending reduction is just bookkeeping sleight of hand...

The chances of another maverick joining Maldonado appear to be fading. Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, has been specifically targeted because of his being somewhat less conservative than other senators, but he's reacted to the pressure -- including a Democratic Party threat of a recall campaign -- by becoming more adamant. If, as the Field Poll indicates, public pressure is unlikely to crack the GOP solidarity in the Senate, the question now is whether Democrats will feel enough pressure from their constituent groups that are dependent on state financing to give ground on the Jerry Brown demand. This week's rhetorical maneuvers...

aine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes by congressional district, and that's what the proposed California ballot measure would do. Each candidate would receive one electoral vote for every congressional district he or she captured. The statewide winner would be awarded the two electoral votes representing the state's two Senate seats. The initiative was filed by Republican lawyer Thomas Hiltachk, who hopes to qualify it for the June 2008 ballot if he and his associates -- GOP figures all -- can raise enough money. If they make it and the measure were to be approved by voters, it would be...

Ackerman, meanwhile, has maintained remarkable unity, despite the defection of one senator -- the proof being the growing frustration among Democrats and in the Governor's Office. Although Ackerman had been under fire for being too cozy with Schwarzenegger and Democrats and retained his leadership position by a single vote, his mild-mannered stubbornness has made him a force. Núñez and Perata may say they won't negotiate further, but they have almost no capacity to force Republicans to budge, given their safe districts and their lack of personal stakes in the budget's details. Perata's declaration that he won't take up other legislation...

The other night, as the Senate's Republicans were blocking the state budget, GOP Sen. Tom McClintock alluded to the driver's license pledge, sending an implicit but unmistakable message that a big impediment to a deal was mistrust of the governor's promises to cut enough spending to bring the budget into rough balance. Rightly or wrongly, Republicans believe that he'll sell them down the river in his eagerness to deal with Democrats. That mistrust, when coupled with Schwarzenegger's cavalier treatment of GOP politicians last year, made all but one of the senators impervious to his pleas.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described the state budget impasse Thursday as "very damaging" and added: "California deserves much better than that." He's right, but probably not as he intended. The fact that the budget is more than a month overdue is not the most shameful aspect. It is that he and most legislators are willing to enact another deficit budget at a moment when revenues are flattening and the gap is destined to widen. Schwarzenegger and others who want the current version of the budget enacted -- which it would be if one more Republican senator would vote for it --...

But Republican senators are taking them seriously as they hold up passage of the budget, listing the sanctions as their largest single spending cut to bring the budget into balance. Picking up Schwarzenegger's earlier rationales, Republican legislators contend that the sanctions are needed to bring California into line with federal welfare reform rules on work. "The only people thrown off welfare ... will be felons, illegal aliens and persons who don't comply with such draconian rules as trying to find a job," Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, wrote in an op-ed piece circulated to California newspapers. Whacking welfare rolls would be...

Fourth in a series of 10 columns ... (snip) As he took office, the state faced a huge repayment of short-term budget deficit loans in June 2004 that it didn't have the money to make. The proposed solution was stretching out repayment through a $15 billion debt refinancing bond - much like a family's taking out a new home mortgage to cover crushing credit card bills - but it would require voter approval at the March 2004 primary election, so time was short, and Republicans were demanding a tough state spending limit. Initially, Schwarzenegger backed the strict limit, but Democrats...

<p>Political rhetoric is much like gossip; it begins with a kernel of fact and then is bootstrapped by repetition into something entirely different.</p> <p>Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the receiving end of some critical media comment and political pamphleteering these days for his supposed betrayal of a pledge not to accept or seek campaign contributions. But it's something of a bad rap for California's governor.</p>

<p>The title of the "briefing and discussion" that was to be staged last Thursday in a wing of the U.S. Capitol in Washington was intriguing to anyone who has been following California's historic recall election.</p> <p>"American Democracy's Uncertain Future -- And Is California an Unsettling Vision of Our Democratic Destiny" implied that learned, serious people were to look beyond the hoopla surrounding the recall and seek the deeper meaning of what was occurring in the state.</p>

7:15 PM PT DAN WALTERS visits with Brian Wilson Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters will share his keen observations about the Gray Davis- Bill Simon race for the governor's office. Walters began writing the state’s only daily newspaper column devoted to California political, economic and social events in the 1970s. He is the founding editor of the “California Political Almanac” and is the co-author of a recently published book called “The Third House: Lobbying, Money and Power in Sacramento."